Stupidest, Boneheaded Thing You'll Admit to Doing in Combat Mission

[Probus]

  OK, I've done a lot of stupid things playing Combat Mission, but this one takes the cake:

  Playing a great PBEM game in which I was doing really well.  I only had two tanks.  A pair of Stugs and I moved both of them up to take out one of my enemies' Shermans.  Moved my first one right up, found his Sherman and POW! up goes his Sherman in flames. Drunk on my victory I move my second Stug up to look for another Sherman he has poking around and BAM! right into my own minefield.  My Stug is completely destroyed. 

  That has to be the stupidest thing I've done in Combat Mission I think, but no, its not over.  My first tank, the one that took out the Sherman has also, just barely, entered the minefield.  So I delicately back up and KABOOM! another mine goes off destroying the tank.  And that's it.  Both my Stugs I destroyed myself in my own minefield.  That has to be the stupidest thing I've ever done in Combat Mission. 

  Anyone else willing to share and help me reduce my shame? 

[A Canadian Cat]

I recently started a meeting engagement via PBEM and forgot immediately it was an meeting engagement and treated it like a probe. It ended very badly, I was out of position and was slaughtered. I promised myself to never do that again... And I just did it again earlier this week. OMG talk about being thick.

[ALBY]

Every once in a while I watch a vehicle or team make a thrilling (stupid) charge into enemy territory and I realize that what I thought was a face command was actually a suicidal movement command.  

[Codreanu]

Trying to use ISU-152s as close range fire support is the first thing that comes to mind. Damned things probably killed more of my own men than they did enemies.

[chuckdyke]

Not canceling a barrage is on top of my list. Move my units right into it. 

Edited September 3, 2022 by chuckdyke

[chuckdyke]

15 minutes ago, Codreanu said:

trying to use ISU-152s as close range fire support is the first thing that comes to mind. Damned things probably killed more of my own men than they did enemies.

Leave units well outside it LOF the Lend Lease Valentine was more useful in one of my battles. 

[Brille]

Well things I do constantly, despite telling myself I wouldn´t do this nexttime:

1.) Underestimating the spread of mortars (or arty in general). Therefore preventable friendly fire instances happen again and again.

2.) Forgetting to clear line of fire for canons/autocanons. For example my own infantry lay low in a forest line and directly behind them stands my Shilka. Those fools will almost always get peppered with small fragments as soon as the Shilka accidentally hits those trees, while engaging an enemy behind the treeline. 

 

But for my biggest mistake I have to explain further:

Red on Red engagement (syria) early in the morning, so visuals are bad (for those who dont have night vision equipment). I had a full company of T62MV. My opponent had something around a platoon of T90 lurking behind a small ridge. The firing distance was very short.

Me, somehow in strong belief that this black smoke from the soviet style tanks are somewhat multispectral blocking, letting those T62 build up a smoke wall to negate the T90s night fighting ability/thermal sensors. As I carefully planned and sent the turn to my opponent signs of misbelief grew inside me. So I looked up the facts in the forum and was totally shocked to read that my "knowledge" was false.

So the next turn I witnessed the best turkey shooting those T90 crews would have in a lifetime. Only one of my T62 could penetrate the smoke wall and demolish a T90 as it tried to reposition itself. But this T62 died the heroic death too soon after. God that was embarassing.

[Vacillator]

Some minor (and obvious) ones come to mind:

• Spending ages to set up unit moves (including splitting teams), only to later inadvertently select everyone via the HQ and reset everyone's moves to parallel the HQ.  Definitely not good in a PBEM .
• Wrongly interpreting what a 'westerly wind' means in relation to the in-game 'compass/not a compass'.  My smoke screen was good, but quickly headed off in the wrong direction .
• And a very early one when I first got CMRT (my introduction to CM).  I thought a large force of (obviously superior ) Tiger IIs and Panthers could advance across open fields and successfully slug it out with IS2s in the overlooking woods.  Wrong, even if a big factor was main gun / gunsight damage, occasionally questioned here on the forum.  If anyone would like to replicate my initial ineptitude the scenario was 'Gog and Magog' which is great.  I later re-visited it much more successfully but armed with too much intel due to my earlier attempt.
• A recent PBEM one where I set all of my units to 'hide' ready to ambush, and watched as my skilled opponent drove his T34s straight past my hiding units without being engaged.  Seems I was a little sloppy at unhiding and/or setting arcs.
• And just for laughs, thinking I could smoothly direct a convoy of KG Peiper panzers across a bridge .

[Lethaface]

Getting good ideas while watching a turn, then forgetting to implement the orders in the order phase. Repeat for a few consecutive turns ('hey didnt I have this idea before already?'). I probably forgot about my worst mistakes, nothing to see here 

[Aragorn2002]

Sending my still intact Panther as decoy to the front while my Panther with his gun damaged kept overwatch, instead of the other way around...

Edited September 20, 2022 by Aragorn2002

[Erwin]

Trying to play H2H a scenario that doesn't work H2H.  (Eg: CW's "Stem the Tide" scenario says it's suitable for H2H in one place and then "Play as Blue only" in another place.  I can save players frustration by confirming it is horrible for the US player if played H2H.)

[dkchapuis]

25 minutes ago, Erwin said:

Trying to play H2H a scenario that doesn't work H2H.  (Eg: CW's "Stem the Tide" scenario says it's suitable for H2H in one place and then "Play as Blue only" in another place.  I can save players frustration by confirming it is horrible for the US player if played H2H.)

 

Im playing  Stem The Tide H2H now as US.  about 8 turns in.  Im looking at all those tank contacts and thinking "this doesnt seem very balanced".

[Ithikial_AU]

- Ordering my infantry to move into my own artillery barrage / planned air area target zone. This is usually due to coming back to a saved game days later... usually.  

- Not using my off map support more liberally to pave the way for my advance fearing I'll run out when I need it most. Meanwhile my pixeltruppen are giving me evil eyes as they need to cross open fields in the face of four machine guns.

[Combatintman]

19 hours ago, dkchapuis said:

 

Im playing  Stem The Tide H2H now as US.  about 8 turns in.  Im looking at all those tank contacts and thinking "this doesnt seem very balanced".

The clue's in the title ...

[landser]

I'm fully capable of boneheaded moves, but I struggle to think of this stuff in relation to Combat Mission. Maybe it's not boneheaded, but it made me feel that way.

In the CMRT campaign Blunting the Spear, I was playing the fourth mission, an attack on Cimene. After a duel with the assault guns at the far end of the map, losing a couple of Mark IVs, we attacked our main right-side objective, the Brickworks, with four infantry platoons, a platoon of Mark IVs and a host of halftracks supported by artillery. With plenty of time on the clock, I was in no hurry, and using all of my assets, including smoke and recon-by-fire, we took the complex with no losses. It had been held by a single sapper platoon, who are dangerous at close range with a number of SMGs and satchels. In and among the buildings at the site they could have done some damage. But the recon-by-fire made 'em mad enough to shoot back, and the battle dominoed from there. Before long they tried to pull back, but I had shifted my armor on to the flanks in anticipation of this and cut them down.

The armor in the open ground on the left side of the map made progress after the assault gun duel until they came up against well-concealed anti-tank guns. One Mark IV was hit, the commander incapacitated, and the crew abandoned the tank. I halted my armor, unwilling to send more in front of the gun. Instead, artillery, mortar, machine gun, howitzer and tank fire lashed through the copse of woods. After ten minutes of this I had remounted the tank and attempted to reverse it to safety and the AT gun came to life and knocked it out. Dammit.

The weight of fire dropping on, and lashing through, that stand of woods should have left nothing alive. When I finally thought it safe because there was no sign of life coming out of it, I remounted the crew and boom! Dead tank. Felt like a sucker. As if that AT crew was just sitting there waiting for it. They must have had good holes.

 

 

I do AARs of all this stuff it seems and I found a shot depicting the scene, which I have not edited for clarity. Apologies. The crew in question can be seen center-left, with the crew icon showing them outside the tank icon, which remains because the tank is abandoned, not destroyed, with the remainder of the platoon halted a little further to the left. The crafty AT gun is the faded icon center-right just below the Cimene N marker. You can see a spotting round just hit to the left of this patch of woods. This was shortly before I ordered the crew to remount their tank.

So yeah, maybe not boneheaded exactly, but I felt like I got suckered, and you need to keep every barrel in the line in that campaign to see it through to the end.

 

[Bubba883XL]

ignoring my re inforcements when they turn up and completely forgetting about them lol

[Artkin]

On 9/20/2022 at 11:24 AM, Aragorn2002 said:

Sending my still intact Panther as decoy to the front while my Panther with his gun damaged kept overwatch, instead of the other way around...

Reminds me of the time I accidentally sent the overwatch platoon in instead of the assault platoon during OnePingOnly's CMRT FR tournament hosted on TheFGM. 

11:55